Any real debate is over. Take a look at the following, and then let's talk about whose words these are.Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increasesin global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and risingglobal average sea level. Global mean surface temperatures have risen by 0.74°C (1.3ºF) overthe last 100 years. The rate of warming over the last 50 years is almost double that over the last

In the last couple of months, my husband and I were both “furloughed”: we were each informed by our respective employers that we had to take 5 (in his case) and 8 (in my case) unpaid days off. Of course, like many Americans, we smarted at this financial blow. But we also thought heck, it’s better than being laid off entirely, or watching our co-workers get laid off. However, there was one crucial difference in our respective furloughs: my husband (who works in the private sector) was told to take those days off.

Here’s the set-up; you have until Friday at 4:00 to answer: You’re teaching an introductory survey for non-majors to a lecture hall of 200 students. Since the class is only 50 minutes long, three times a week, you handed out a prompt last Monday for a short take-home essay due Friday by 4:00 p.m. The prompt stipulated that no late essays would be accepted. On Wednesday last week you gave an in-class test of matching, fill-in-the blank, and short answers. You drove your TAs (and yourself) to finish grading and recording all the scores by the end of the weekend.

Every presentation that you make should be posted up to http://www.slideshare.net/ Every slide deck that your students create should be posted to Slideshare. Every conference presentation should have a Slideshare. Check out Malcolm Brown's presentation on the Classroom of the Future and tell me that I'm wrong. Slideshare Predictions:

For a while now, I've been hearing that climate change is, among other things, a moral issue. The basic argument centers on the truth that the people who will suffer first and worst as the planet heats up are ones who had little or nothing to do with creating the problem. People living in marginal settings -- in semi-deserts, on unprotected coastal plains, in the Arctic -- are already seeing increased incidence of droughts, wild-fires, storm surges and ice melt.

The Planet Money podcast from NPR has a running feature called "Today's Economic Indicator" (or something like that). It's a number plucked from wherever that's meant to be suggestive of something larger. I've heard a number of good ones locally of late. My local economic indicators for Fall of 2009:--usual utilization rate of work-study money on campus: 75-80%--amount by which our work-study allocation increased this year: 50%--this year's utilization rate for work-study money on campus: 100%

Lesboprof has a thought-provoking post up about imposter syndrome. It's that nagging feeling that you get in an authority role that you don't really know what you're doing, and that you're this close to being exposed as a fraud. I remember having that the first few times I taught. But I sort of expected that, and there was a year of T.A.'ing to help me get used to the idea.The surprise for me was how much more intense the syndrome was once I moved into administration.